24/7 customer support
Professional writers
No plagiarism
Privacy guarantee
Affordable prices
94% of return customers
Free title page
Free bibliography
Free formatting
Free of plagiarism
Free delivery
| Home |
| Order form |
| Contact us |
| Blog |
| Three Schools of Disenchantment |
| Research is an opportunity to build personal and professional discoveries on the foundation of previous work, and to present those discoveries to readers who, in turn, may build upon them. How is it that such an exciting prospect can come to seem so exhausting and futile to so many people? How is it that research writing so often reduces confident writers to confusion and helplessness? It's useful to understand the larger context, the political and economic pressures that have transformed research writing from a skill into an exclusive privilege. These pressures are brought to bear early in the educational process, when the burden for teaching research writing falls on English teachers. Caught between the chaotic, unsupported opinions of students, and the insistence on certifiable competencies by the culture, high school English teachers have few truths to grade objectively. After all, their colleagues in chemistry or math can give multiple-choice quizzes, draw up grade curves, and rank students. English teachers have to make up the criteria and the curve in full knowledge that the teacher down the hall might judge the same student's paper very differently. As class enrollments rise, it is not surprising that teachers settle on the conventions of grammar, punctuation, and documentation as their "subject." Rather than encouraging students to discover connections and present interpretations, they shift attention from thought to appearance. The effect on writing in general has been devastating; on research writing, it has been catastrophic. Teachers drill and quiz their students on footnote form, or train them to build fantasy bibliographies. A student who spends weeks on his or her research paper and sees little or no comment on the content, but instead finds points deducted for incorrect footnote form, gets a clear message about the teacher's priorities and grading policy. These priorities are by now so familiar that teaching genuine research writing on almost any level seems impossible. When the student gets to college, he or she finds that expectations for research writing have broadened to include the proper use of sources. But although plagiarism is clearly condemned in the college catalog and a cause for immediate dismissal, students are rarely instructed in how to integrate their own experiences, opinions, and ideas with what they read. Because they do not consider their students mature thinkers, college writing teachers emphasize not thinking but a series of steps in a research writing process that gives the appearance of thought. This sequence of steps has little to do with learning how to think clearly or write powerfully. Once again, the English teacher's job is to prepare students for writing "real" research papers later on, in graduate school. How much more helpful it would be to train people from the start to look for meaning, gathering, filtering, and assembling material to present ideas to readers. In high school, for example, we would have been fascinated to know that accurate documentation instructs a reader, or that an annotated bibliography introduces a reader to works he or she did not know. We would have been able to see research writing in the context of communicating our own discoveries and interpretations, and we might have come to expect an exchange of ideas with our teachers. In college, it would have been gratifying to be liberated from the restrictions against taking a stand, and encouraged in our research writing to integrate our own views as we gathered material. We would have seen research writing in the context of developing and presenting a more precise yet more comprehensive perspective than we (and perhaps even our readers) had before. Finally, in graduate school, we are expected to say something. But instead of coming to the end of our training, we have only begun an apprenticeship. We apply our knowledge of the conventions of research writing to carefully circumscribed topics: the minor poet, the marginal issue, the footnote to history--an endless series of flat subjects which we are expected to bring to life with the energy of ambitious disciples. The opportunity to write about a subject of our own choosing is a long delayed, jealously guarded reward, despite the fact that professional success depends more and more on publication. In the same way that training for law school and medical school involves adopting appropriate attitudes, training in research writing involves obedience in choosing humble topics. Thus, the long development of research writers begins with empty forms, and all too often ends with empty content. We lose the pleasures of genuine research writing; as readers we are deprived of discovery, new knowledge, and the inspiration to learn more. Trained to list a certain number of sources, and how to list them, we lose sight of what sources are for, and how to weigh one against another. We compile information in the absence of a compelling principle or a unifying interpretation. Under pressure to demonstrate dependability, we substitute tenacity for intensity as if deeply felt thought were wholly disconnected from the pursuit of knowledge. It's easy to see, in this three-stage progression, why many people come to dread research writing. It is not a matter of organization or editing. If you want to do authentic research writing, you have to free yourself from the culturally induced inhibitions against the vigorous exchange of ideas. High school students should know that footnotes and bibliography are editorial matters that emerge from the active process of gathering and filtering material. Proper form can be found in any number of handbooks, consulted in the same way mathematicians consult logarithm tables. In college, taking a stand should not be considered a luxury or a reward. An essay that sticks too closely to sources results from the writer's failure to develop a thesis of his or her own to test in the material. Moreover, because the very selection of material is bound to be subjective, an independent, honest writer must work to distinguish his or her own point of view. In graduate school, writing should be an authentic challenge engaging the student's enthusiasm for learning. This is the risk and the value of research writing: being fair and comprehensive while having something important to say. Why else would we want to make a claim on a reader's time? |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
24/7 customer support
Written from scratch papers only
Any citation style
Fully referenced
Never resold papers
275 words per page Courier New font